Phone Power

I've been with PhonePower for the past 1.5 years and it works great as a phone but I’ve been trying to use it as a FAX line and had nothing but problems. I have spent numerous hours with their technical support letting them know that i cannot receive faxes, they work on the issue with me which takes about a day or two then fix the problem which comes back within a week or two. They admitted to me that they are aware of the problem with fax and their service so i don't understand how they can keep advertising it. I have 3 fax machines at my office so i know it’s not an issue with the fax machine itself. They lock you in a contract and if you want to leave or port the phone number to anther company you will get slamed with charges. Find someone more reliable... just switched to e-fax and love it, easy to use and reliable.

Our Phone Power VOIP phone service has not worked in a year-and-a-half after we logged 50 hours of customer service and technical support calls trying to get it to work. Phone Power refused to let us out of our contract even though they could not deliver on the product we paid to receive. Their customer service policy seems to be "The Customer is Always Wrong" and "Our Company is Always Right." There appears to be no limit to how far they will make the customer go to prove their product is not inferior.

We became PhonePower customers in 2009 with a pre-paid 2-year contract of $15 per month. Be aware the fee goes up to $20-30 per month after your contract expires unless you call the month prior to the contract expiring and set up another pre-paid, lower-priced contract. However, this additional extension of the contract proved a mistake for our family. Here is our experience:

Initial set-up of Phone Power VOIP service took 35 hours. Yes, you read that correctly -- 35 hours. Most of those hours were spent online or on the phone with their technical support department. Tech reps continually jimmied this and that and ultimately got it working, but only because I had the time to spend at night on the phone with their technical support team. You may be wondering to yourself: Why on earth would anyone spend that much time on the phone trying to get their VOIP service to work? The answer is simple: Because the company would not let us out of our pre-paid contract. No exceptions. No common sense. No limit to how many hours the company expects you can spend on the phone with their technical support team. It seems that even if the company does NOT provide the service you have paid to receive, you are still on the hook for the full cost of the contract (whether you prepaid the contract or whether you are month-to-month on contracted service their policy is the same.) They are perfectly willing to have a customer spend 35 hours of their time trying to get their product to work rather than to let you out of their contract -- or, shall we note, to take their claws off your money. Their phone service works about 70% of the time, some days it did not work at all.

The nightmare truly began when we moved and brought the Phone Power VOIP service with us. For some inexplicable reason, it did not work in the new apartment, even though we brought all the cords up without disconnecting them and we did the "plug and play" route of the same set-up that had previously worked. We spent 15 hours on the phone with Phone Power trying to get it set up, eventually asking to be let out of the contract and again being told that we just needed to spend more time on the phone with customer service and there was no way for us to be let out of our contract (I have since learned there is an early termination fee option, and I advise customers to take it rather than try and deal with this company). Our Phone Power VOIP service has not worked for the past year and a half, and when I called today to again ask for a refund or to be let out of their contract, the supervisor Jessica again told me the company would do nothing and I was stuck. This is their modus operandi. When I asked where I could lodge a complaint about her customer service, I was told in a very snotty tone that "No one is on the floor but me. There is no one else for you to complain to," as though their company has no president or CEO.

It appears the technical support team keeps lousy call records, so be sure and keep your own account. Our account record apparently never showed the hours of phone calls we logged trying to set up the service, or the fact that we requested repeatedly to be let out of the contract. I listened in disbelief as the supervisor "Jessica" told me that our technical call record indicated that our troubles were "all resolved" and that "customer was pleased." This was a total fallacy. The technical support team did actually shine today (a rarity) and got my phone service working in just 2.5 hours -- it appears that split wall jacks can severely disable the service, which no one had ever mentioned before this call. At least the remainder of our contract commitment will not be a total waste of money since we will actually have the phone service to use. However, even during these last "successful" 2.5 hours, I had to make three separate tech support calls, and one representative simply hung up on me. When I called back, the tech support record said it was a "dropped call." Yeah, right.

Needless to say, we will not be re-upping our contract next time. We are a bit smarter after this horrid experience! Give Phone Power the BIG MISS if you do not want serious headaches with your phone service. There are undoubtedly honest VOIP providers on the market.

The two year deal was pretty good. Faxing works well. Kept my number. No interruptions in calls while I've been using it. I'd recommend so far.

I got sucked into prepaying for 2 years. Then, after a year, they say, oh surprise, there are a bunch of fees and taxes that we forgot to tell you about.

So, now the contract is up. They don't offer any decent prices per month, so I start shopping around. Found out about voip.ms!

Went on their web site to do the change over.

The phone change over was scheduled for 6/18. So I go on the phone power web site, and cancel service, as of that date. I get an email from their system, with the right date. Then, 2 days later, I get an email saying your service has been cancelled! 10 days early.

Plus the email says they want that old grandstream device or they will charge me $100! This old used beat up device is not worth $10!

So I started emailing them. I mailed billing first, and referenced the cancellation number. After a week, no reply I started emailing sales and support, with the cancellation number. I never got a single response from any one.

These clowns setup their email so they explicitly ignore emails about cancellations, is what I was told when I was finally forced to call their inept billing people.

All I wanted was to trade the 10 days of no phone, for the old cruddy used ATA adapter. No sir. No way. They will charge $100! They said no. They'd rather have a pissed off customer, than give up their old used ATA adapter. If I fight it with credit card company, they will show them the terms of service contract, and I'll be screwed.

Boy am I tempted to stay and fight! But I just went to amazon, and ordered a brand new device and had it sent right to them, with the rma # in place.

FORGET phone power. voip.ms has no monthly service charges period. They charge 1.05 cents per minute, for north america, and not much more for international. So even if we ever used 1000 minutes in a month, that would only be $10! We never come close!